The Big showing is located in the eastern headwaters of Blackbear Creek, approximately 8 kilometres east-southeast of its junction with Spanish Creek.

The area lies within the eastern part of the Quesnellia terrane. This region is underlain dominantly by fine-grained metasedimentary rocks, which are in contact with the Barkerville terrane. The metasedimentary rocks comprise mainly dark- grey phyllite and silty slate considered to be of the Middle to Upper Triassic. Part of the black phyllite succession is informally correlated with the Nicola Group but has also been informally referred to as the Quesnel River Group sediments.

Mineralization consists of argentiferous galena with associated gold values in quartz veins cutting graphitic silty phyllite. In 1983, a channel sample yielded 117.9 grams per tonne silver and 3.27 per cent lead (Assessment Report 12566).

In 1981, Canadian Nickel Co. Ltd. completed a program of prospecting and sampling on the area as the BB claims. In 1983, Clearbrook Mining prospected the area as the Big 2-3 claims. In 2015 and 2016, the area was prospected and rock samples were taken by Barker Minerals as the Black Bear East property.